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Watered Down Travel Ban

See? I told you so.
Creation Date Thursday, 16 March 2017.
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I have some friends and family who supported President Trump from early on in the process. From time to time they will ask me when I will admit that I was wrong about him. "If Trump does x... If Trump gets y... If Trump supports a policy that results in z... will you admit that you were wrong?" My answer is always "no", because I wasn't wrong. To be clear, I could be wrong in practical application, but that isn't what an election is about. Elections are about theory and speculation and, generally speaking about judging records. Trump had no record to speak of, and his history of stances on issues was all over the map. I opposed his candidacy for several major reasons, all of which are proven valid in this single issue we now refer to as the "travel ban". Here were my reasons.

Trump has no experience in politics or holding elected office, and experience is essential to making a person an effective leader. Yes, he has experience in business, but that isn't governing and doesn't necessarily carry over.

Trump repeatedly claimed he would do things as President that were unconstitutional or downright illegal. For example, banning all Muslims from entering the country, or ordering the killings of family members of terrorists.

Trump showed no desire to learn the system that he was entering into. For example, he got picked apart in states with unbound delegates by more savvy and experienced candidates.

Trump's positions are all over the map, and often influenced heavily by the last person he spoke to. Thus, it is unlikely to assume that his position today will still be his position on the same issue 4 years from now.

All of these are valid reasons to oppose a candidate. In other words, I felt that he would be ineffective at implementing his plans based on his lack of experience. I felt that some of his plans would be blocked based on their failure to comply with current legal structure. I saw him as a man who thought he could "wing it" and get by without having to learn the intricacies of the job, and I highly doubted that we would actually get the things he was promising since his positions were highly susceptible to changes. Now since I opposed him on many things, in practical application this could make him a better President from my point of view than from that of his supporters. However, to support him based on a hope that he later changes some of his views and fails at implementing others would be irresponsible. Thus, I adamantly opposed him. Enter the travel ban.

I have literally been proven right on every single point on just this one issue. Let's take them one by one and look at them. Now I understand that Alan Dershowitz is widely regarded as a liberal, but since the Trump administration is pointing to his defense of travel ban part 2, I will reference his opinion on travel ban part 1 here.

"It was badly executed, overbroad, and just not consistent with the best values of what America should be like. I think the whole thing was rolled out very poorly. They apparently never really checked with the lawyers. It could have been crafted in a way that made constitutional challenges more difficult. So, I think the roll out was very unfortunate."

So we see here the inexperience of President Trump. In the business world he can just set and implement a policy. In the event that there are legal problems with it, the process drags out typically for years and his business can profit from it in the meantime. In government, this isn't the case. This leads us to point number 2.

"And let me tell you something, I think we ought to go back to the first one and go all the way to the top which is what I wanted to do in the first place."

---President Trump at a Nashville rally last night.

Than why don't you, sir? I used that quote for a reason. It serves my purpose two ways. First, if he wants to fight the legal battle on the first ban but he isn't, that shows that his legal advisers are telling him that he won't win. You see, he could very easily put the second ban up to get temporary action while fighting the legalities of the first ban, but that's not what he's done here. Basically, he's admitting that his first ban was illegal, but that doesn't stop him from wanting to do it anyway. The reason why he so often suggested we do things that show disregard for the law is that he clearly has no regard for the law when it deals with him.

"A judge has just blocked our executive order on travel and refugees coming into our country from certain countries. The order he blocked was a watered down version of the first order which was also blocked by another judge, and that should never have been blocked to start with."

---President Trump at a Nashville rally last night.

When I heard him say this I about fell out of my chair. Now I'm not a lawyer, but I don't feel like the following statement is going too far out on a limb either. When you do something and a judge says "you can't do that" but you want to do it anyway, so you decide to do something really similar and hope you get away with that, it's not exactly a good idea to tell this judge "this is a watered down version of what you told me not to do". Again, not a lawyer, not a judge, but I am a betting man and I'd put down a wager that his lawyers audibly groaned when they heard that. I'd also bet that you'll hear it again. Probably from the plaintiff's lawyers in the opening arguments against the case in court.

(New York, NY) December 7th, 2015, -- Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on. According to Pew Research, among others, there is great hatred towards Americans by large segments of the Muslim population. Most recently, a poll from the Center for Security Policy released data showing "25% of those polled agreed that violence against Americans here in the United States is justified as a part of the global jihad" and 51% of those polled, "agreed that Muslims in America should have the choice of being governed according to Shariah." Shariah authorizes such atrocities as murder against non-believers who won't convert, beheadings and more unthinkable acts that pose great harm to Americans, especially women.

The preceding is taken directly from the press release still posted on Trump's campaign website. I don't have to argue that this ban isn't even remotely similar to what he promised. His Justice Department is preparing to make that argument for me in a court of law. I'll let you take their word for it and, for the record, I concur.

So I ask you, of what use is it to support a President who has plans that are subject to changes on a whim, unlikely to hold up against legal review, and will be implemented by a man who lacks the experience to properly implement them and shows no desire to learn how it is done and might even step on the toes of those in his cabinet who do know how it is done? But the problem is even deeper than that with this guy. Remember this?

"I don’t want the enemy to know what I’m doing," Trump told Fox News in May 2015, the month before launching his presidential campaign. "Unfortunately, I’ll probably have to tell at some point, but there is a method of defeating them quickly and effectively and having total victory.”

He added: “All I can tell you it is a foolproof way of winning, and I’m not talking about what some people would say, but it is a foolproof way of winning the war with ISIS."

However, upon becoming President he didn't implement this plan to defeat ISIS. Instead, he gave the Generals 30 days to come up with a plan to defeat ISIS. Yes, the Generals which he claimed knew less about ISIS than he did, but I digress.

The relevancy here is that there are two parts to Trump's strategy here, one real and one concocted. Trump didn't really have a secret plan to defeat ISIS, so he deflected questions by saying he didn't want to tip his hand to the enemy. Unfortunately, he was seemingly unaware that there were other legitimate uses to this strategy of hiding your hand outside of the one where you attempt to con people into voting for you by making them think you have a plan when you don't. What am I talking about?

In shooting down the recent ban, judges referenced things President Trump said back when he was a candidate. Today, legal scholars are debating the validity of this line of argument. I don't know who is right and who is wrong, but imagine for a second if President Trump hadn't tipped his hand on this issue. I'll give you an example of what he might have said.

"As President, I will have access to much more information and I will use that information to design a plan to keep terrorists out of the country. We may have to look at what people we allow in based on religion or country of origin. Perhaps we will need to temporarily pause all or some immigration while we revamp the vetting process and make it more stringent. I can't tell you now specifically what I will do then, because that would tip off people who will want to get around the system on what is coming. I can only assure you that I will do everything in my power to keep the bad guys out."

If that had been President Trump's approach, his "watered down" travel ban would have gone into effect last night. If he had the desire to follow the law, this new version would have been the first version and, if he had the experience requisite to do the job it would have been implemented in a way that would have stood up to legal challenges. All of that would have made it irrelevant that he doesn't care to learn by making it impossible for him to have helped craft the plaintiff's case against this ban in a campaign rally last night.

So long story short, no. I won't apologize for my opposition to Trump because I was right and you were wrong. However, because I'm gracious and humble I won't ask you to apologize for supporting him either. Thank me very much.

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